Life Change or Lifestyle Change for 2015?

People often believe they have to schedule a date to start exercise or diets. They believe life has to change and they recruit friends and family members for support for their big endeavor. Initially, they have great success and gradually fall off the wagon and stop talking about whatever activity they had thrown themselves into or the diet that was going to change their lives. Does this sound familiar? Most of us have been there.

It doesn’t work because it is often not sustainable. Changing your life on a given start date is too difficult to maintain and when you reach the plateau, which you most certainly will, you become discouraged and often return to your old life. Starting a workout that isn’t fun or is far too advanced is also a recipe for disaster or again, just not sustainable.

What if you adopted a gentler approach, a less stressful change and a change that was manageable and sustainable? What if you just changed one aspect of your life at a time? What if you just reduced your caloric intake by 200 calories a day by reducing the sweetened beverages you drink or had one less alcoholic beverage? What if you reduced the number of times you ate out in a week? What if you started power walking for 10 minutes a day? What if you picked up the pace going up the stairs each time? Do you really need to do all or nothing? Does it have to be a life change or can it be a moderate sustainable “lifestyle” change one thing at a time?

Consider this, if you burned 100 calories doing activity and reduced 100 calories from your diet per day, that would work out to 73,000 calories per year or a weight reduction of 20 pounds. Picture yourself 10 – 20 pounds lighter in one year and think about how that could change your life.

What could you do today to improve your health, longevity and become SO Full of LIFE? What would your baby step be?

PHOTO: Me after dropping from size 10 to 4 over about 1 year eventually leveling out at size 6